What a long and unblogged weekend!

Friday I had my first experience with dentistry outside the U.S. I know, I know… I’ve been living overseas for, what, over five years now? But we’ve got private health insurance now and I felt like it was finally time to do something about the way my wisdom teeth keep flaring up in this INTENSELY PAINFUL WAY every few months. Sure enough, it looks like they’re going to have to come out. (The bottom ones, anyway.) I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’ve never had an operation. Everyone who’s ever had them out has differing tips and horror stories too. At any rate, the HCF Dental Centre in Chatswood was really cool in a futuristic kinda way. I’m used to tiny little rural dental practices. This was like dentistry as practiced with economies of scale. I was directed back into a massive warren of cubicles, each manned with a little Asian dentist and assistant. I drew Dr. Tang, who had an extremely Ocker accent and threatened to beat me over the head with a book if I don’t start flossing. I liked him.

After the dentist I had lunch with Rodd’s sister Jeannie and his nephew Kurt. (Hey, I guess he’s my nephew now too! Odd that I never really thought of that before. I’m an Aunt!) We had a lovely visit. Afterwards I had a long walk from Milson’s Point over the Harbour Bridge into the city. What a gorgeous day. I was just walking along, listening to the iPod and having this total Tara D Moment where I just felt so in tune with the universe and in love with the city and so grateful about the state of my life. Oh, and obsessively poking my tongue into the seemingly gigantic holes between my newly-cleaned teeth.

I’m rambling on and on. I’ll never get to Monday at this rate! I should go faster. On my way home I saw a car on fire in the middle of George Street. I called the Snook and took pictures with my phone but it never blew up or anything, so eventually I headed back to Chippendale. That night we took Amy over to Una’s for some much-needed bratwurst and beer action. We finished the night watching Samson & Sharkey at the Nag’s, where Sharkey was so kind as to dedicate an Elvis song to the Snook and me. Saturday, of course, we pulled up pretty short after all that beer. I just made it to the Knitting Guild meeting that morning. We spent the rest of the day eating zucchini bread and lazing about. I also managed to finish the Snook’s Slytherin scarf – in record time! – in preparation for our trip to Hogsmeade. Sunday it was back to work for me, but luckily today was a public holiday so my week is all nicely broken up. (The colonials are all supposed to be celebrating Lizzie’s birthday.) I spent the day knitting a new sweater for the Snook while he brewed a beer in honour of the sovereign. As it’s a brown ale, I believe he’s calling it “Her Majesty Mrs. Brown.” Heh.

Face Analyzer – You upload a picture and this site purports to analyze your race, gender, and aspects of your personality. It’s pretty crap though. The first one I uploaded was my short hair and it came back with “No archetype found.” I’m a mutt! Then I tried this one with long blonde hair and glasses. It pegged me as a 100% Chinese male. Whatever. And no matter what I uploaded of the Snook, it always came back as predominantly Middle-Eastern. I even tried one with no facial hair – thinking that was the issue – and it pegged him as a Middle-Eastern/Eastern-European female! He must be too pretty.

The funniest parts of this Fugging are the references to Dawson’s Creek:

Joey Potter would not lie to me like that. She didn’t lie to me when she went off on that boat with Pacey, and she didn’t lie to me when Dawson’s dad died chasing an errant scoop of ice cream, and she wouldn’t start now.

And what’s with Tom Cruise wearing the leather jacket everywhere? He wigs me out.

Via John: Dating a Developer. You know, I’d have to disagree with several of those “tips.” In fact, most of them actually apply to me way more than the Snook. I’m the one that stays up all night writing code to categorize cross-stitch charts. I’m the one on the street pointing out the frequency of iPods to iPod Shuffles (“…and can you believe that wanker still using a Nokia N-Gage?”) I’m the one with the growing collection of Apple-related T-shirts. (I’m totally making my own “Steve Jobs is my homeboy” shirt.) Him? He’s in bed every night by 10:30. He never notices people’s gadgets (or their shoes or anything else about them, for that matter). He’s not a bleeding-edge consumer; he finds old hard drives in our apartment complex’s garbage room and tries to bring them back to life. He doesn’t drool over the Apple Store. I think he’s a lot more old-school geek than the new era of fanboy Mac-loving CSS cowboy “designers,” and I prefer him that way.

Oh, and #2? She was SO WRONG on that one. My Snookums only has eyes for me. 🙂

Via the Snook: A scotch egg… made from an ostrich egg. Normally I loves me some scotch egg, but blecch! (I’m still a little queasy from the thought of poor Charla eating an entire scrambled ostrich egg on The Amazing Race.)

Bookstores: The Natural Laxative? That is the funniest Ask MetaFilter of ALL TIME. “The power of bowels compels me!” Bwa ha ha!

Holy crap. The rumors were true! Apple is switching to Intel chips. Even the best Mac pundits got that one wrong. Man, I haven’t even gotten my new replacement G5 yet, and it’s already obselete! Friggin’ great.

As the time for the meeting drew closer tonight, I started mentally preparing myself for my first week of weight gain. I mean, it was a given. I haven’t been exercising; I haven’t been tracking my Points; and I’ve been eating my face off. (For the record, the deep-fried camembert at Una’s is the BOMB.) So anyway, there I was groaning: “You guys, seriously. I’ve gained, like, two kilos this week.” “What?” my boss Albert said. “No you haven’t. You’ve lost half a kilo.” You wanna bet? So we wagered twenty bucks on it. I headed off to the meeting feeling like it was a win-win situation.

Well, guess what? The bastard won! I lost another half kilo exactly! I was in total shock. This goes down in the books as officially the Best Sickness Ever. That brought my total loss to date up to 8.2 kilograms. That’s just over eighteen pounds in two months! How insane is that? I don’t feel that different. I mean, my pants are looser and my new pink jacket buttons nicely in the front, but I feel like eighteen pounds should be more obvious, you know?

At any rate, I’m back on track with the program now. I managed to talk the Snook into doing the City to Surf with me this year, and it’s only ten weeks away. Hopefully I’ll be closing in on my goal around then!

Oh my God. Miftik found a pattern for a knitted cat sweater… with STEEKS! Insanity.